The Scientific Thought

HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF THE SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. **Ramón Ruiz, México 2006**

History and Evolution of the Scientific Thought Ramón Ruiz

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION … … … … ….. … … … … … … .. …. … ..… … … 1

CHAPTER 1

Origins of the Knowledge …………………….……………….. …. …. … 3

The Human Conscience …….…………………………………..…..……… 43

The Scientific thought … … ………………………………………..…… … 59

CHAPTER 2

The Nature, the Culture and the Science … … ……………………… … 65

Forms and types of scientific investigation … … ………………….. … 73

The processes of Abstraction … … ………………………………....… … 76

CHAPTER 3

The Scientific method and the General Methods … ……………. … … 88

The Phases of the Scientific Method … … ………………………….. …...108

Bibliography…………………………….………………………………………169


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PREFACE

From the ancientness, the human being has worried about
transmitting his experiences, his skills, his myths, his credence, his
desires, and wishes.

Once man appears on the Planet earth, it faces and realizes that
one exists without end of problems and obstacles; which it is resolving
in an intuitive and gradual way, with great difficulty due to his scarce
one or little experience of the events that him were arising and
presenting him to him.

More nevertheless, similar raisin the time is invented its own
hardware (tools or implements), which come to be an extension of his
hands or of his both top and low extremities.

The natural phenomena and the needs that present him to him
force it to try to give some response as a natural reaction product of the
external and internal stimuli of which it turns out to be fastened.

Little by little he is realizing that it possesses certain virtues and
completely different (cognitive) characteristics that the low animals. And
it is like that, since the awakening of the conscience begins, being
allowed him to realize of certain events that were presenting him to him
with certain period of recurrence. But it was across thinking, learning,
observing and relating that it began to fix the information that it was
obtaining of his daily activities, and this way he was constructing his
thought from the experience and the challenges that every day was to
his step.

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In agreement, with the previous thing it is possible to say that, the
history and evolution of the scientific thought is the result of big
sacrifices and dedication of generations that of one or another form
they have contributed and impelled the development and evolution of
the humanity.

Some persons, they have to wonder: how and of what way does he
contribute the development of the scientific thought in explaining and
describing the processes that are a part of the natural and social
phenomena?

The Greek HERODOTO, who lived in the V Th century B.C., is
thought the father of the history. He travelled round the whole
Mediterranean, and then he wrote a titled work History, in which it
counted what he had seen.

Some historians as Herodoto, have given themselves the task of
transmitting us and of putting at the disposal of the humanity, the
events of his time, where it is possible to appreciate like every culture it
strained in leaving something for the posterity as: constructions that are
erected forming big monuments, colossal works where it appreciates the
multiple forms of the human thought and the creativity.

According to Aristotle (384-322 to. of C.), all the alive beings also
have the aptitude to feel (they perceive and have emotions) the world of
his environment and to move in the nature. More nevertheless, the
human beings have also the aptitude to think or to reason, or, in other
words, of to arrange his sensations in several groups and classes. The
human being has feelings, emotions, and the aptitude to move as the
animals, but also a capacity, which only has the human being, and is
that of thinking rationally and emotionally; to be or acquiring a level or
state of conscience. Which allows him and helps to understand in a

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conscious way all the processes to which he turns out to be submitted
during his interaction in the society and in the world.

The origin of the universe, the solar system, and the life of the
plants and animals that are a part of the Planet earth have been some of
the questions that the man has brought with it from generation to
generation. It is possible to say that, from the year 1760 until 2006, they
are almost 246 years in which gradually one has come gestating and
developing the scientific and technological thought.

Nevertheless, there even stays a lot of work that to realize. It is
necessary to take in account that; if the man perishes or is destroyed,
then also the thought perishes; if the man transforms also then also the
nature and the society will be able to manage to transform.

The human being constructs the culture, and the culture the
transforms to him, it is suitable to reflect up to where it wants to come
and which are the general targets of the goals of the human being; since
the scientific and technological knowledge is infinite, if the nature is
infinite in his multiple forms and movements of the changes of the
matter then the object of study of the phenomena becomes infinite.

It is important that, the researcher across the scientific
knowledge as the only viable and sure way to investigate, to
understand, to analyze and to describe the human nature, and the
processes that appear in the nature and in the society, encourages and
strengthens it so that the future generations are provided with a
cognitive instrument that should guarantee them to describe and to
understand the reality of the sensitive world.

It is like that, like the material present that I put at his disposal
tries to transmit and of present in a simple and clear way the history
and evolution of the scientific thought, like a set of knowledge that

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arise after the myth, superstition and religion; whose knowledge has
served as base and foundation for the construction of the science.

Finally it is possible to formulate the following interrogations:

1. What is the impact in the society, in the daily life or in the culture
in general and in the entire world, the use and the development of
the scientific and technological thought?

2. Which is the intention of the Basic and applied Science, as well as
of the Technology in the life of being a human being and in the
Society?

3. Which is the advantage of the man of science, on the ordinary
person, with regard to the awakening of the conscience?

4. How does the man of science can, to help to promote the
cognitive top instruments of man?

5. Will the scientist be able any day, to transform to the ordinary
consciences, across the scientific and technological knowledge?

6. Will the scientist be able any day to manage in a future, to
discover and to understand the origin of the man, across the
scientific and technological knowledge?

RAMON RUIZ.
Mexico, on September 12, 2006.


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INTRODUCTION

From the HUMAN BRAIN there comes any feeling, thought, emotion,
memory, desire, language or aptitude to learn, to reason and to
investigate. From this organ the creativity and the imagination grows,
he and the sensory organs are the bridge between the physical world of
the objects and the world of the Ideas or Representations of the man;
that across the knowledge of the phenomena manages to understand
the laws that govern in the Nature and in the Society. And it is like that,
that with the help of the science and the technology the man, can
transform the resources that are in the environment for the sake of the
Humanity.

The human being must be seen and studied as a totality, as everything.
Since the human being is not a cosmic accident, but a culminating phase
of all the natural order, with the peculiar and important function that to
realize. Only he can illuminate to the nature with the light of the
understanding and direct consciously his life and his activities inside a
voluntary harmony with this order, since only he, of all the visible
beings, possesses the faculty of rational comprehension, for weak and
fragile that is, of this cosmic harmony.

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS

On having analyzed the historical origins of a big diversity of
scientific, technical, social and artistic disciplines, it is established that
these had a rudimentary practice since the man appeared on the Earth.

The same happens with the origin of the SCIENCE, since one
affirms that the Acts of thinking are universal and so ancient as the
man; and that due to his physical limitations, the prehistoric men had
the need to gather together and to cooperate between yes for being able
to reach, in a joint way, certain targets with major efficiency and
economy of action and resources.

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The activities of the prehistoric man took as an essential target
satisfying his needs related to the Survival in a way of dangers, tensions,
discomfort, etc. Meanwhile a man was devoting himself to achieve his
ends for yes same, realized Acts of intuitive thought; when it was acting
as a whole, inside the group rudimentary aspects of intuitive thoughts
were happening as a whole, we support in the experience of previous
activities.

The hunting for animals to make use of his meat as food and the
skin as garment performed the principal activities of which during a lot
of time the prehistoric men realized and which it serves as undeniable
indication of a form of Primitive Organization and of the transmission
experiences in the groups. To realize such activity in group needed a
Plan of Action to achieve the target with major facility and minor risks
for the safety of the individuals, since to hunt wild animals was a
dangerous adventure.

At first the Plan of Action was consisting of scaring to the animals
throwing stones, expressing screams, etc., to direct them to an abyss or
pitfalls previously constructed for the attainment of the target.

The methods were evolving in the measurement in which they
were using his Intelligence to invent weapon (mallet, spear, and later the
arch and the arrow), like instruments to improve the ways of realizing
his activities of fighter, were sustained in the observation and the needs
of his environment; but this was achieved thanks to the experience and
the human reasoning.

Everything previous needed from the Human Cooperation, where
we can identify a common target of group, a rudimentary division of the
work, and for logical deduction, to certain persons who were exercising
the leadership on others.

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1.1.-ORIGINS OF THE KNOWLEDGE

From remote times, the man was already worrying for the
fundamental questions of the reality that they were affecting in a special
way to his existence: the origin, the nature, the history and the
purpose of the beings and, between these, of the man himself.

As response that was straining for giving to these questions did
not perform rational order – as the philosophy will do it later-, but of
magic and mythical - religious nature, it constructed one to know
previously to the philosophy which the philosophers usually call “ to
know prephilosophically ”.

Knowing prephilosophically understands, then, the deepest and
universal expositions of the man, expositions that very much later
(properly in the VI Th century B.C.) the philosophy recaptures and tries
to answer of rational and systematical form.

Since it has distinguished itself, knowing prephilosophically
worries, consequently, for knowing and explaining, of magic and
mythical - religious form, the origin, the nature, the history and the
purpose of the beings.

Of magic form because in epochs of knowing prephilosophically
the man it makes use of the magic to know, to dominate and to explain
the partial reality or whole of the phenomena that happen in the nature.

With the term magic – of the Greek Magike Tecne: the art of the magic-,
it was designated originally “the divinatory art of the priests mazdeos”
of the zoroastrismo, in Persia.

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He magic is of oriental origin and it spread in Occident during the
period Greco-Roman, lasted of more or less secret form along the
Middle age to return to the light with the Renaissance, epoch in which
he was conceived as part of the philosophy that “allows the man to work
the nature and to dominate it”. And it was like that, as this way the
magicians, a meda tribe or priestly Persian caste, they were devoting
themselves to the astronomy and to the astrology; that's why, they were
had “as managers of the supernatural forces”.

The magic was of that time and it has kept on being a way of
knowledge and mastery of the entire reality.

His myth – of the Greek myths: word, public speech, history-,
faithful to his sense original, means any history regarding a real fact
belonging to the origins, and repeated in the worship or in the history of
the world and of the man. The fact becomes present in the words of the
narrator since, in other words, “the myth is a history of the time
primitive, had for real, which explains and bases the phenomena of the
environment, of the history, of the society and of the human life”.

Now then, the myth lives and re-lives through his force in the
polytheistic religion, which in his religious ceremonies brings the events
gone on to the present in the words of the one that he narrates, of that
he sings the events spent as explanation of the present reality.

This way, also the myth and the religion are a form of knowledge,
since history announces us the finished reality, world, man, and to the
same divinity, which they present in the history of both, since it
happened in case of Mexico, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece.

The myth, then, knows in his level and explains, to his way, the
reality that it makes constantly present in the words of the narrator.

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1.2.-The Thought and his Factors

What means to think?

Thinking is an activity that we realize in a natural and
spontaneous way, every moment, every day, and all the human beings of
the whole world during our ephemeral stay and passenger in this planet
earth.

Perhaps some of them wonder: “What is to think?”, or: “Why do we
think?” he seems to us to know it perfectly; but if we are forced to
answer we feel confused, faltering, and finish with confessing our
ignorance.

Factors of the thought

Thinking Subject.
Psychic Process of thinking.
Thought-out Object
Expression of the thought-out thing.

1.3.-The processes of the Human Thought

The thought is defined as the mental derivation of mental
elements (thought) from the perceptions and as the manipulation and
the combination of these thoughts. To the thought in general he is
named sometimes cognition. To the processes of the thought there are
called they, sometimes, cognitive processes, and to the thoughts it is
called them cognitions (of the Latin cogito, that means “fodder “;
wherefrom it comes also quot;cogitarquot;).

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The term to quot;thinkquot; includes mental tidy and untied activities, and
describes the cognitions that take place during the judgment, the
election, the resolution of problems, the originality, the creativity, the
fantasy and the sleep.

They are the cognitive processes those that distinguish in a more
clear way the man of the animals; the top thought provides the man of
advantages for the survival that they have parallel, since to solve
problems with great advance and to save abysses (with the thought)
long before coming to them. The French philosopher Blase Pascal came
to the conclusion that the cognition was the divine gift of the Creator of
that the eternal dignity of the man was basing only on his aptitude to
weigh. Pascal wrote that: “The man is only a cane that he thinks, the
cane of more fragile nature. He dies of a simple jollification, of a simple
drop of water. But although the universe was conspiring to squash it,
the man would keep on being nobler than what it makes it fall down,
since it is known that he dies and the universe does not know anything
about the victory that it obtains on the man”.

3.1. The psychologists are interested in the thought for several
reasons:

The rules of the thought “without errors”, he allows to understand
the perturbations motivacionales and emotional of the cognition.
The experiments about the thought look for skills for the
resolution of problems and, often, they discover better methods.
The logic clarifies the scientific method.
The investigations you continue about the thought that they
study, this cognitive process that little recognizes so and that
bases every important progress of the arts and the sciences. The
investigation tries to discover the creative latent talent.
The thought is accompanied by neurophysiologic phenomena that
reveal preeminent properties of the nervous system.

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The human thought is compared with the animal quot;thoughtquot;, which
allows to extract unsuspected conclusions about the development
and the evolution of the man and the animals.
The computers have simulated to the thought. The investigation
of the thought allows to do thin designs of computers.
The thought is fundamental for the intelligence, and the
investigation of the thought favors the improvement of the tests
of intelligence.
The thought and, especially, the fantasy are the foundation of the
test projective that evaluate the personality.
The cognitive deviation distinguishes to the pathological
personalities of the normal ones.

It is this material named history and evolution of the scientific
thought studies the ideas and the concepts, the affiliation of the
elements of the thought, the inductive and deductive logic, the
productive thought (the judgment, the comparison and the resolution of
problems), the novel thought (the originality and the creativity), the
fantastic thought (the fantasy and the sleep), the activity neuromuscular
and the cortical that they accompany on the thought, the development
of the processes of the thought in the individual, and the apparent
cognition of the animals and the machines.

1.3.2. Elements and functioning of the thought

Next there will be studied the simple ideas, like units of thought.
James Mill wrote that the perceptions that we have by means of the
senses, exist only for the presence of the object, and they disappear
when it is not present. It is known that it forms of our constitution the
fact that, when our perceptions disappear, for the absence of his
objects, there is something that remains … We designate to this trace, to
this copy of the sensation, which remains after it eliminates the
perception (sensopercepción), with the name of idea (mental

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representation that generates the human brain, in the individual). The
word “Idea or representation” does not express anything any more than
the simple fact, which is indisputable …

This way, we have two classes of mental phenomena: one, which
exists when the object of the sense is present; other, which exists after
the object of the sense has stopped being present. The first class of
phenomena called it “Perceptions “; another “Idea or mental
Representation”.

In the XIX Th century previous perceptions appeared to the
scrutiny. The Ideas can designate to the perceptions of any sense; even
the visual ones (think about the white snow with the closed eyes), the
auditory ones (think about the noisy thunder while a few stoppers have
positions in the ears) and the gustatory ones (think about the herring
salted with the empty mouth). For this mental production of ideas, some
time ago that the language has assimilated the word ideation and his
adjective ideativo, that James Mill proposed.

The ideas can be mental images (almost you copy of the
perceptions) or mental symbols (substitutes without images of the
perceptions).

The persons possess clearly different faculties to evoke mental
images; someone of them can avert lived images or symbols; others,
moderate images or symbols, and others cannot avert any image, but
only symbols.

This was the surprising discovery of Sir Francis Galton, an English
anthropologist of last century. Galton, in one of the first statistical
psychophysical studies, examined the ideas used by the scientists and
the schoolboys.

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Galton said to them: “Think about the table of his breakfast, since
it was when they sat down to her this morning. Is it the dark or quite
clear image? Is it his brightness comparable to the real scene? Are all
the objects really defined at the same time, or there is some moment in
which the place more clearly definite is more limited than in the real
scene? Are there very precise and natural the colours of the china, the
toasts, the crust of bread, the mustard, the meat, the parsley or any
another thing that has been in the table?

To discover the wide scale of the mental imagination, Galton
arranged the responses of hundred adult questioned males, and these
are the common appointments in descending order:

1. Brilliant, different, never blurry.
2. So brilliant as in the real scene.
3. On having thought about the table of the breakfast of this
morning, all the objects of my mental image are as brilliant as in
the real scene.
4. With the eye of my mind I can see the table of my breakfast or an
equally well-known thing, so well in all his details as l to vein if
the reality is before me.
5. Quite clear and with a lighting comparable to that of the real
scene, especially when I evoke it for the first time. Devoted to
become tenuous when him one does not pay attention specially.
6. The image of the table of my breakfast is quite clear, definite well;
also the part where I feel and his surroundings are definite well.
7. I can evoke any alone object or any group of objects, but not the
whole table simultaneously. Generally, the things are definite well.
Our table is long; in my mind I can walk the look for the table; but
not the whole table simultaneously.
8. Dark and indistinct, anyway, I can do a relation of the table of the
breakfast of this morning; sliced herrings, roast chickens, bacon,
rolls, jam of quite clear colour, plates of green tenuous colour

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with pink flowers raised, the garments of the girls, etc. Also I can
say where all the plates were and where the persons sat down.

Galton spent his life looking individuals who had an extraordinarily
vivid imagination; one, for example, was evoking images of combs and
was counting his teeth. Nevertheless, the most expensive treasure of
Galton was Flinders Petrie, an archaeologist whose technical works
about Egypt keep on being classic; Petrie towards mathematical routine
calculations with an imaginary rule of calculation, was preparing the
rule and was reading the responses mentally.

Therefore, we can say that, the investigations confirm that the
cognitive productiveness does not depend necessarily on the mental
images; often intellectual eminences use symbols exclusively.

During more than 60 years, the psychologists have studied the
children eidetic (of the Greek eidetic, that it means “ relatively to the
images ”), who possess images eidetic as persistent that appear
immediately after the visual stimuli and remain great more time than
the posimágenes, prints or common denials. The recent investigations
reveal that about 8 % of the children is eidetic; this gift disappears after
the adolescence begins.

The eidetic describe with extraordinary detail, since it is possible to
notice in this taken extract of a typical protocol: “I see the woman with
the sunshade in his hand. There is a type that runs in his car, his right
foot is in the air … The man of the right hand has lost his cigar, which
has fallen down to the soil next to him … ”

Ralph Norman Heber and his companions inform the following finds
in his investigations with children eidetic in North American.

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The children eidetic present themselves with equal frequency in
all the ages between the seven and thirteen years (more or less).
The eidetic males and women present themselves with equal
frequency.
The imagination eidetic is not related to the intelligence.
The eidetic preserve his aptitude to have images eidetic as during
the whole infancy.
The undue attention that lends during the scrutiny disturbs to the
images eidetic as; for example, the attentive eidetic that
verbalizing the content of the picture stimulus during the
exhibition, images cannot form eidetic as. This experimental
observation is the opposite of what is waited, and it is not
understood.
The eidetic have little control on the images eidetic as. They can
neither change the size of the image her nor withdraw of the
surface where there appeared the picture stimulus (a child said
that “it was falling down).

1.3.3. Concepts (derivative ideas)

In the XVIII Th century, Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician who
was living in Germany, discovered patient and deliberately, a frightening
capacity of the human mind; he wrote the following thing: “The senses
represent objects that exist externally and all the simple ideas refer to
them. But with these simple ideas, the mind forms many other ideas that
they already do not represent to the objects that exist really”.

For example, when I look at the Full moon, I form the idea of
roundness; but I cannot affirm that the roundness exists for yes same.
The Moon is round, but the roundness does not exist separated from the
Moon … here the mind exercises a new faculty, which is called a power
of abstraction; this happens when the mind gives his attention only to a
quality or quantity, as if unit was already not to the object. These ideas

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that are acquired by abstraction, are named notions, to distinguish them
from the simple ideas that they represent to the objects that exist truly
… there is a type of additional notions that form equally by means of
the abstraction, and that provide to the mind the most important
material.

When I think about a pear tree, a cherry tree, an apple tree, an
oak, a fir, etc., all these simple ideas are different. Nevertheless, I notice
that there are several things that they have in common, as, for example,
the trunk, the branches and the roots. To the symbol on which all these
qualities concentrate I call it a tree. So that the idea of tree, which I have
formed this way, is a generic notion and understands the resemblances
of the pear tree, the cherry tree and, in general, of all the trees that exist
or they will exist.

The knowledge intellectual

Is the appropriation of the objects that us cannot be presented by
the senses, to which they cannot stimulate. These objects are the ways
of life of the things and his relations, what sound, what they cost, why
and why they are, etc., etc.

The successful knowledge and that can serve us to acquire new
knowledge, constitute ours to know, which is, therefore, the possession
or incorporation of our life of knowledge ready to be updated. It is
usually called to know potential, to separate it from the effective use of
this knowledge that name to know current. Also it receives also the
name of knowing the completion of the psychic process in which
something is known.

The knowledge and, therefore, knowing, is achieved by means of
the production of certain experiences, which set receives the name of
thinking. East reveals us as a psychic event of peculiar nature: it turns

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on objects, which it treats of apprehender whole or partially, refers to
them, them lie. Let's remember what in us happens, when we hear a
word or a phrase that we understand; we give them a sense: this one to
give sense and acts of thinking are this sense. They them are also the
expression of our words, what we lie as they and our mental. For him we
feel especially active, it is one to go towards here and there, one always
to strain, with a point of view, one continued pointing, it prays in this
direction, prays in other one.

According to Aristotle (384-322 to. of C.), all the alive beings also
have the aptitude to feel (they perceive and have emotions) the world of
his environment and to move in the nature. But more nevertheless, the
human beings have in addition to the aptitude to think or to reason, or,
in other words, of to arrange his sensations in several groups and
classes. The human being has feelings, emotions, and the aptitude to
move as the animals, but also a capacity, which only has the human
being, and is that of thinking rationally and emotionally; to be or
acquiring a level or state of conscience. Which allows him and helps to
understand in a conscious way all the processes to which he turns out
to be submitted during his interaction in the society and in the world.

1.4.-Some problems of the Knowledge

What is the knowledge?

It is a process in which there are linked narrowly the operations
and mental, subjective procedures, with the operations and forms of
activities objectives, practical, applied to the objects. The knowledge
that arises as product of this process, takes the stamp (trace) of the
interrelated aspects.

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It is the appropriation of present objects to our conscience. This
appropriation peculiarìsima allows us to act on the world, to direct our
conduct and to give a sense to our life. The possession of the successful
knowledge constitutes ours to know, which constantly our effort to
acquire new knowledge and it serves as plot in which the new
procurement are woven.

1.5. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS AND HIS CHARACTERISTICS

The philosophy has arisen thanks to the human curiosity, as a
beginning of the knowledge to describe, to analyze and to explain the
phenomena and puzzlers that appear in the nature, in the individual
and in the society.

He tries to look and of exhibit the response to worrying questions
about the truth, the being, the existence authenticates, the Absolute one,
the transcendence of the spirit, the good and evil, it is to do philosophy.
The tendency to investigate, to know the last sense of the things, has
existed in the man along the whole history. In the western world, the
above mentioned tendency has excelled from the VI Th century B.C., in
Greece. The history of the philosophy is the trace that has left this
investigative tendency of the man, it is the series of aspects and
solutions that the philosophers have discovered, in his investigations
about the reality.

The problems regarding the knowledge

It is a question of determining the validity of the knowledge. In
what conditions is it real? When do we reach really the truth? Up to
where they reach and our cognitive faculties limit themselves?

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The importance of this problem results from the moment in that
offer themselves several solutions to the same question. The fact that
each one has his own response, and, sometimes, completely opposite to
that of others, it does not stop being worrying (the dialectical law of the
unit be remembered and it fights of the opposite ones), for that it tries
to study in depth the reality.

Why is no the only response to the problems of the soul, the
freedom, God, the good and evil? The same History of the Philosophy,
with his chain of systems and solutions, is a motive of worry for the
philosophical spirit.

There have been five solutions to the problem of the knowledge:
the skepticism, the empiricism, the rationalism, the idealism, the
realism. The skepticism denies validity to all knowledge; the best thing
is doubting. The Empiricism only grants cognitive capacity to the
sensitive faculties; or rather, knowledge is valid only when it is
supported in some sensitive experience. The rationalism, on the
contrary, claims that the senses cheat, and that the need and the
universality of the scientific knowledge only are obtained by means of
the intellectual faculties. The Idealism, for his{your} part, he denies that
we could go so far as to know to the things independent from the
subject, finally, it supports that yes we have valid knowledge reached by
the senses and the intelligence, and that they reach to the same reality,
which is independent from the subject that he knows.

Tendencies in the scientific investigation

With the intention of understanding the controversy that as
regards the comprehension of the social sciences has been generated;
there has adapted herself the taxomonía of Burell and Morgan (in Of
Cock 1997). According to these authors, the principal currents of
thought in the social sciences can be studied doing a map of any theory

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or coherent investigation along two dimensions: the dimension
Objetive/Subjetic and the Regulatory / revolutionary dimension.

Dimension Objetive/Subjetic

For effects of our investigation, we assume that the first
dimension refers to the constant opposition between two radical
tendencies, the objectivists and subjectivists.

The objectivists, who look for the explanation of the phenomena
giving to the information excessive objectivity. His interest centres on
the generation of universal laws by means of the search of causes and
effects; these tendencies, they have been named positivist tendencies,
every time only it costs the positive fact (that one that it is possible to
demonstrate). For these, the world does not depend on the subjects,
since, on having been governed by laws, it is possible to control the
sociocultural phenomenon.

The subjectivists claim a comprehension of the social
phenomenon, granting to subjective the principal source of the
information; before generating universal laws, there look the description
and someone for the comprehension of particular stages.

The social world depends on the subjects and it is them who
construct it and the vivencial; therefore, to know it, it is not enough to
generate explanations objectives on him; it is not possible to consider
that the social world should be governed by universal laws, since the
realities are for the subjects meanwhile every group can live through a
different reality. In this sense a social reality cannot squared in a
Cartesian plane and percentage table, since the society is a dynamic
jumble of significant and important that constitutes the above
mentioned reality.

23


The battle that is lived between these two tendencies is expressed
by Mardones, on having thought that two traditions in the philosophy of
the scientific method are the tradition Aristotelean and the tradition
Galilean. First, worried by the comprehension; how, and his teleological
explanation from the essence of “giving account of the facts”. Second,
worried for why and why, does it occur of the ideas of Galileo, Plato and
Bacon, and does it try the explanation from the causes and
consequences of the phenomena. Since his interest is the general law
that governs the phenomenon, it returns, according to the author, in
mechanism and functionalist.

Hammersley and Atkinson, admit likewise, that two paradigms
have existed in conflict in the social sciences, on the one hand the
positivism (dimension Objetivista) that privileges the quantitative
proper methods of the natural science; and on the other hand the
naturalism (dimension Subjectivist), which defends the description
objective from the phenomenon from a natural way.

Referring to the same controversy, Taylor and Bogdan, they admit
two theoretical principal perspectives in the social sciences: the
positivism, which affirms that the social scientist must consider the
facts or social phenomena to be things that they influence day pupil the
persons; and the Phenomenology, which wants to understand the social
phenomena from another perspective of the actor. Likewise, Of the
Slope, it assumes this controversy from the consideration of qualitative
and quantitative methods of social investigation.

This battle between the objectivism and the subjectivism has
been based from the paradigmatic considerations of the philosophy
considered by Briones, as empiricism, rationalism, idealism,
materialism and existentialism.

24


The empiricism, which he considers to be the knowledge as
product of the sensitive experiences and has his consolidation in the
experiment. The contemporary expression of the empiricism is in the
logical positivism.

The rationalism, for whom the knowledge is a product of the
reason, inferring consequently the deduction from the discovery of the
causes of the phenomena. Any effect, it has his cause; therefore, on
having found her, it is possible to dominate his effect. The deductive
expression of the rationalism is in the search of laws and his
generalization, and is assumed by the positivism, as a contemporary
expression.

The idealism, which defines all knowledge as a product of the
ideas; for his drives, the world does not exist out of the mind, since
what exists is a subjective representation of him. This paradigm has
evolved from the most orthodox positions as the idealistic subjectivism,
up to the positions that recognize the existence of the world expressed
across subjective categories, which, they are independent to all sensory
experience, case of the transcendental idealism. It is considered that the
maximum contemporary expression of the idealism is the
Phenomenology.

The materialism, for this paradigm, everything what exists
belongs or depends on the matter, the ideas, for example, is only a
consequence of the organization of the matter. His expressions have
been achieved from the tendencies functionalists and structuralisms.

For the functionalists, the knowledge does not have to be faced to the
facts or consequences, but to the organic function that implies being
indivisible in his units, and must be studied by means of methods
targets and procedures probabilísticos. A cause cannot turn
independently from the consequence, since it corresponds to a structure

25


of function; the stimulus, for example, cannot turn independently from
the response, was saying Dewey (quoted by Abbagnano).

The tendencies structuralisms, they rest on the theories of the
gestalt or theories configuracionistas of the form. These tendencies,
they arise as a response to the atomism of the theories associationism,
assuming that the reality does not consist for the sum of the parts, but
for the entire or structural form. Before speaking about facts, his drives
speak about configuration, forms and fields taken as entire structure.
Koler and Koffka were his founders (on 1930).

The expressions of the materialism are diverse; between them, the
historical materialism is considered to be the dialectical materialism, in
scientific materialism and the physical materialism and fisicalismo.

The realism, he thinks the existence of the world and the
phenomena independent from the mind. According to his drives the
world exists this way it has not been thought. In this paradigm different
tendencies have appeared; from those that assume the knowledge as an
exact representation of the exterior world (ingenuous realism), up to
those who think that this reality is necessary to submit it to review
(critical Realism).

The second dimension, regulatory / revolutionary, express the
constant tension between the entire radicalism of the tendencies
objectives and subjective and the possibility of the same tendencies of
being achieving more flexible positions.

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Tendency Objectivist:

A constant tension between the radical thing and the regulatory thing

The classic positivism

In this dimension, recognized like positivist for all the consulted
authors, there are located those investigations that present the
following characteristics: (To see Hammersley and Atkinson, Mardones
and Briones).

1. The natural science is conceited in terms of the logic of the
experiment. It has been constituted in base of the natural sciences
and rests fundamentally on the empiricism.
2. The search of universal laws rested on the deductive method and
the use of the polls as instruments to generalize, from the
rationalist vision of the world.
3. It uses the language of the neutral observation, where he looks for
the standardization of skills of observation, to grant the validity
of the information, according to perspectives assumed from the
realism.
4. Since his characteristic is to be subject to the cross-check and
falsación of hypothesis, his target is to verify the theory with the
empirical facts. For the previous thing, the used instruments are
pre-established and rigid, validated by means of actions previous,
which guarantee his universal use.
5. It uses the causal explanation or “Erklaren“ as characteristic of the
scientific rationalist explanation.
6. His interest centres on the mastery of the positivist knowledge,
which from A. Comte, places the emphasis on the prophecy of the
phenomena.

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The positivism, it has been recognized for big theoretical, achieving
his biggest developments from the XVI Th century until the first
decades of the XX Th. Between the first drives it is possible to consider
Copérnico, Francisco Bacon in 1600, August Comte in 1840, who
introduces the term of positivism and Emile Durkheim in 1938, those
who were his first representatives. The positivists look for the facts or
causes of the social phenomena with independence of the subjective
states of the individuals (To see Taylor and Bogdan and Mardones).

The positivism, from a social point of view, was assumed, according
to Sandoval, Taylor and Bogdan, and Restrepo, for Emile Durkheim on
having proposed, in his book on the rules of the sociological method
that: The social scientist must consider the facts or social phenomena to
be things that they influence day pupil the persons, and claim with it to
introduce the requests of the technical rationalism and the sensitive
experience of the empiricism to the social studies. Therefore, Durkheim
introduced the experimental method used in the natural sciences, which
search to find the causes of the problems to exercise his domain over
the phenomenon. This approach rests basically on the translation of the
behaviour of a phenomenon or object on Cartesian quadrants and
mathematical scales.

Since the classic positivism is the expression of the paradigms
empiricist, rationalists and realists of the philosophy, he does not
know the influence of the idealism in the knowledge, since he considers
it to be a speculation.

The regulatory dimension of the objectivism

In the XX Th century, the interventions of the logic introduced to
the positivism, they generated the so-called logical positivism, like one
of the forms of declaration of the neopositivism. It is a new version of
the positivism; Schlick was impelled by Russel, Wittgestein I, and Carnal,

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Neurath, Frank, between different, as big representatives of the circle of
Vienna (to see Mardones, 1991, 33; Rosental, 1997, 371, and Briones,
1996b, 39).

The authentic existence of the man

At present there has taken heyday the Existentialism (Sören
Kierkergaard), whose central topic is the elucidation of the
characteristics of the authentic existence of the man. It is a question of
the most human problem that could affect each one; on his resolution
there depends the keynote of the life continuing.

Is the freedom the essential thing in the human life? Are they,
perhaps, the moral values (ethics) the most important thing? Of what
does the authenticity consist? How must the interrelation and human
communication be carried out? How does the human level of authentic
existence degrade itself?

Such are the principal questions that are tried to solve in the
above mentioned philosophical current, and this is alone a sample of a
plot of the scientific knowledge. Which has his base in the humanism,
since across the scientific knowledge, he tries to find a solution, and of
put it at the disposal of the humanity, for the best benefit of the
emotional and intellectual development of the individual and of the
society.

The problem of the constitution and evolution of the Universe

The problem of the time and of the space, of the evolution and of
the essence of the matter, they constitute one of the central topics in
the works and investigations of the physicist modern. Generally they are
the scientists those who have devoted himself to penetrate
philosophically in the above mentioned matters. The important thing is

29


to clarify that, at the moment when a person tries to base the knowledge
as soon as you fell, in your own branch, in this moment it is doing
Philosophy. The Cosmology is the philosophical branch that treats the
above mentioned matters, and she was one of the first ones that were
cultivated between the Greeks.

The problems of the Logic, the Ethics and the Aesthetics

The typical topic of the Logic is the order of the concepts. It is up
to her to pass about the mental structures, the correct processes in the
reason, and the laws of any structured well thought, as that of the
definitions, the divisions, the categorizations, the conversion of
intentions, etc.

To the Ethics it corresponds to treat the questions about the good
and the evil. His importance derives from the role governing that the
above mentioned science acquires in the mind of the one who
investigates and comes it to based solutions. Together with this problem
they connect that of the obligation in harmony with the freedom, that of
the categories of values, that of the virtues, that of the autonomy in
interrelation with the heteronomy, etc.

The philosophy is one to know fully humanly, to the effect that it
penetrates exactly in the topics and questions that affect intimately the
personal life of every man. This way for example, the Philosophy is the
one that treats the existential, such topics as the freedom, the love, the
interpersonal relations, the loyalty, the obligation, the good, the evil, the
supreme end and the happiness. This way, at the same time that it fills
the requisites of a science as for the rigor and order that of her is
demanded, this way also it fills the proper topics of a properly
humanistic study. The philosophy is, since, a balanced synthesis of
knowing human being.

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Characteristics of the philosophical problems, as for his resolution:

a) The Philosophy, as for the resolution of his problems, it continues
an eminently rational method. Which does not mean that the
empirical information is rejected, so, on the contrary, these
constitute, precisely, the material on which the intelligence
deepens and finds his cause or reason. The philosophical method
is, since, a balanced use of sensitive experience and reason, it is
experimental - rational.
b) And finally, the Philosophy is disinterested, as soon as that the
proper knowledge of his dissertation, problems and solutions
provide, for yes same, a full satisfaction to the intellect that
contemplates them. The Philosophy constitutes, for yes same, a
valuable object, to which it stretches the intelligence as full
purpose. To obtain it, to contemplate it and to satiate itself in her
is the same thing. Which is not an obstacle so that, later, in a
practical attitude, it is possible to obtain applications, uses and
derivations, is to base other sciences, is to apply and to arrange
the proper life.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PHYLOSOPHY AND SCIENCES

With the concept of Philosophy already explained previously, we
can give now a clearer idea of her if we compare it with knowing
scientist as at present it is understood, that is to say with the
experimental or particular sciences. As soon as the Philosophy was
distinguished with regard to the experimental sciences, we will do a
comparison of the solutions that give both levels of knowing opposite to
the same topic to elucidate, for example, opposite to the man, to the
world, to the number, to the human conduct, or opposite to the beauty
or the happiness.

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Difference between next causes and last causes

The philosophy studies the last causes (or supreme), whereas the
experimental sciences study next causes. For example, on having
studied the movement, the Physics receives the topic by means of the
forces, rubbings, weight and balances, which they affect to the bodies.
These are the next causes, and they differ because they always remain in
the plane of the sensitive thing and of the experimentable. On the other
hand, the Philosophy examines two beginning that explain everything to
occur into his essential form, to know, the act and the potency. These
are supreme causes, and they do not remain already in the sensitive
level; only they are received in the intelligible level.

In other words, the philosopher tries to come up to the essence of
the studied object, and his explanation is in vertical sense, since it
leaves the sensitive and experimental level. On the other hand, the
scientist prepares explanations in horizontal sense, inside an
experimental level. The fundamental difference of both types of
knowing resides, since in his different formal object.

The totality and the bias of the material object

Only the Philosophy tries to include the totality of the things; his
material object is wider that it could happen. On the other hand, other
sciences are particular, that is to say, they study a part or certain sector,
between all the entities.

Experimental method and Rational Method

The experimental sciences underline the need of the sensitive
experience, and this way it is in effect, so the laws of the nature are not
deduced of certain beginning, but they have to be observed in a
sensitive way, even using the experimentation.

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On his part the Philosophy, even if it could not do without the
sensitive experience, insists on the Rational Method and in the use of
the understanding, thanks to which it is possible to receive the essences,
the first beginning and the supreme causes that they base to the
Universe.

Difference between Epísteme and Sofia

Another way of receiving the difference between two types of
knowing, is in what Aristotle called Epísteme and Sofia.

Episteme is the science, but understood, not as a set of truths, but
as an intellectual demonstrative habit. The subject that possesses this
quality has facility to demonstrate with rigor and accuracy his asserts,
can base his dissertation, or, gives the causes of those that it supports.

For his {your} part, Sofia is the knowledge that there loves the
philosopher (knife-edges: that it loves; Sofia: knowledge), and it consists
of a conjunction of episteme and nous. The Philosophy, therefore,
includes also the epísteme or demonstrative habit, but he adds
something more: the nous.

Nous is the intuitive habit of the first beginning; it is the mental
quality (intellectual virtue, there says Aristotle) as which a subject has
facility to go back in an intuitive way until the first beginning that serve
as base to any demonstration.

Therefore, Sofia, as soon as it contains epísteme, takes part of the
scientific rigor, and as soon as it contains nous, enters until the
beginning. Is here the resemblance and the difference between science
and Philosophy. The philosopher is, since, a scientist who enters until
the causes and the first beginning.

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The grades of abstraction

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and Saint Thomas of Equinox (1224-1274)
they explained the triple graduation of the formal abstraction.

In the first grade, which corresponds to the Physicist, one does
without the individual matter, and is studied to the mobile entity.
In the second grade one does without the sensitive matter, and there is
studied to the entity quantum (the quantity). In this level the
Mathematics is.
Finally, in the third grade one does without any matter, and is
studied to the entity as soon as such, in the widest possible horizon,
which is called transcendental, and which includes to everything all that
exists. This third grade of formal abstraction is the one that
corresponds to the Metaphysics, nucleus of the whole Philosophy.
Consequently the particular sciences belong at a level categorial
(distinguished), and only now to sit that the Philosophy, from the
moment in which it goes until the first beginning, is a governing science;
this for two reasons:

The Philosophy applies to all other sciences, because it bases the
beginning of them. At the moment when a scientist analyzes the
beginning of his own science, ipso facto is doing philosophical work.

For example: the Mathematics deal with the relations between
quantities; but at the moment when a mathematician checks and
criticizes the bases of his certainty and the beginning that serve him to
base his reasons, it penetrates the limit of his field and touches that of
the Logic or of the Theory of the Knowledge, that are typical branches of
the Philosophy. Exactly this is what has happened in the XIX Th and XX
Th centuries, when the mathematicians managed to clarify dissertations
that now contain in the branch so-called mathematical Logic, and that
must understand each other as an enlargement of the Logic Aristotelian.

34


On the other hand, the Philosophy also is a governing science,
because it gives norms that govern the human conduct, basing on the
analysis of the nature of the man and of his requirements, with which it
derives the general lines of an authentically human existence.

Other parallel sciences

Finally, it is possible to mention other branches of the Philosophy
that have his corresponding parallelism in some experimental science.
For example: the Philosophy of the Mathematics studies the essence of
the quantities, the essentials of his certainty, etc., whereas the
Mathematician studies the relations between quantities.

The Rational psychology and the Experimental Psychology

The first one is a philosophical science, and the person studies the
topic of the soul, of his faculties (intelligence and will), the immortality,
the spirituality, the freedom. On the other hand, the experimental
Psychology studies preferably the observable phenomena and his
explanations, in horizontal sense; for example, the stimulus and the
corresponding reaction. It uses “test“, statistics, experiments done in big
number of persons. This way it is as there have arisen laws, like that of
Weber (that it relates the sensation and the stimulus), and also the
interesting study on the unconscious one, from the theory of the
psychoanalysis of Freud.

The philosophical Aesthetics treat of the topic of the essence of
the art and of the beauty. His method is rational. On the other hand, a
scientific - experimental Aesthetics would treat the same topics, but in
the plane of the experimentable; his methods would be done by means
of “ tests “, statistics, remarks in the history and in the current
civilization.

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Heraclitus, the philosopher of occurring, and of the tension of the
opposite ones inside the unit. “Everything changes” (panta laughed), it is
the phrase that assumes to him, as symbol of his dissertation, according
to which there is nothing in rest. Nobody gets two times in the same
river. What he wants to say is that quite this in constant change or
movement it continued, from the quantity to the quality, everything dies
and is renewed, everything is a cause and effect, and later everything
what is an effect happens to be a cause, all the forms of movement of
the matter are in constant change. Therefore, in the nature and in the
society dynamic processes are realized.

THE MOVEMENT OF THE MATTER AND THE SENSORY ORGANS

But does the movement of the matter exist or is it only an illusion
of the senses?

Parmenides criticizes Heráclito, and it is opposed radically to his
dissertation on occurring. And he affirms that, the movement is
qualified as an illusion of the senses.

Xenon of Elea is a disciple of Parménides and it has become
famous for his abstractions or arguments against the movement. The
most famous of his abstractions is that of Achilles and the Turtle:

The two compete in a career, and Achilles transfers an advantage in distance to
the turtle; from certain moment, the two start running, and when Achilles
comes to the place A, where the turtle was, this one already advanced other
little, up to the point B; when, again, Achilles comes to the point B, the turtle
advanced, in the same space of time, another distance, for small that is, and
came to the point C; and this way successively, the turtle would never be
reached by Achilles; then the movement does not exist.

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Xenon’s intention, with argumentations of this style, is to make to
see that, rationally, the movement cannot be explained, but he drives to
paradoxical conclusions. This way he adheres to the dissertation of the
immobile being, of his teacher Parménides.

Nevertheless, even in the rational plane, the shortcoming of such
argumentation consists of dividing the spaces, both in distance and in
time, in accordance with a decreasing proportion. If the considered
spaces of time were equal, there would no be place for this so absurd
conclusion.

Nowadays, we know that, the movement is the way of existence of
the matter. The English and French materialists were already exhibiting
this idea, considering the movement to be an internal property of the
matter. But the materialists of the past were lacking a dialectical
finished conception of the movement which qualitative diversity they
were reducing often to mechanical processes (theory mechanicist). For
Hegel (1770-1831), who was recognizing the universal movement in the
world, the substance in movement turns out to be, in end of accounts,
the absolute, ideal beginning, and not the proper matter?

The founders of the dialectical materialism (K. Marx and F.
Engels), basing on the advances of the science of his time, showed that
the matter is active and that the source of his activity, of his movement,
is in her same. They showed that the matter and the movement are
inseparable, that no type of matter can exist without being in
movement. Therefore, the movement is the way of existence of the
matter. The matter is the base of the whole plurality of phenomena of
the nature and of the society because it is linked organically to the
movement.

Therefore, without the movement, the world might not exist in
general.

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The materialist mechanicist were considering the movement to be
a simple displacement of the bodies in the space and the time, which
was leading to comprising the matter as a mechanical sum of particles
of substance – atoms, etc.,-identical, of the same quality and indivisible.
For them, the variety of forms and classes of the movement of the
matter was coming down to the mechanical displacement of the physical
bodies.

In contrast to the materialist mechanicist, Marx and Engels
revealed the variety of forms of movement of the matter. The movement
is not only a change of place; it is also the caloric - molecular movement
and the light, the electrical and magnetic tension, the disintegration and
the chemical combination, the biological and, life finally, the most
complex and varied form of the movement: the social life.

Therefore, the concept of movement, from the point of view of the
dialectical materialism, understands all the changes that take place in
the nature and in the society. “The movement applied to the matter, is a
change in general”.

The movement includes all the changes that produce to them in
the world target. His concept is universal in the dialectical materialism
and it has, for it, big importance of beginning.

The concept of change is wider than that of development. The
change understands, in addition to the progressive development, the
regressive movement and the simple displacement in the space, in
which there cannot be progress I do not even return.

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The knowledge presents two aspects:

1. That of the activity in exercises (knowing).
2. That of result of this activity, which forms the content of ours to
know (knowledge). A few times it takes place as soon as the object is
present; others it demands a more or less long and complicated work
and the position of acts of very diverse character: I have here why one
can speak about functions or facts of knowledge.

Classes of knowledge

Traditionally have distinguished in the study of the knowledge
two spheres: that of the sensitive knowledge and that of the
intellectual knowledge.

The knowledge sensible

Is characterized by his aspect purely apprehensive, by the
concrete individuality of his objects and by his physiological necessary
manner of acting. The objects can be present to the conscience for yes
same (immediate apprehension) or by means of representative (mediate
apprehension).

On the other hand, the objects, placed they all in the way in which
we live, can belong to the physical way or to the psychic (social) way
constituting his apprehension our external experience, or can be the
same events of our life (subjective way), our experiences, which
appropriation forms the internal experience.

Forms of the Sensitive Knowledge

The principal forms of the sensitive knowledge are: the sensation,
the perception, this way own like of the sensitive objects and of the

39


neighbour, the imagination and the memory. In all of them it is
necessary to distinguish the aspects of function and content.

The perception. - Is the immediate apprehension of something, in
whose reality we believe.

For the way of making to him the objects present to the
conscience and for the diversity of these, the perception can be
sensitive, interns and of the neighbour.

The perception sensible. - Is the form of cognitive conscience of
the objects to her presents with intervention of the senses. It is an
extremely complex function, with which we answer to the performance
on our body of the beings of the physical way. Nevertheless, into the
analysis of the perceptive function, as explanation of his complexity, a
more elementary act is already admitted and irreducible to simpler
other: the sensation, which content serves as base on having perceived.

What is the sensation?

It is the pure and simple conscience of something, produced in us
on having worked on our body the physical beings. It forms the base of
all our sensitive perceptions, and it is accompanied and as wrapped or
penetrated by multiple acts.

His aspects. - The aspects of the sensation are two: that of being
an act of conscience and that of content of this act. In the sensation of
sound, a thing is feeling the sound and other one the felt sound.

The typical of the first aspect (sensatio) the being is elementary,
pure and simple conscience: the pure apprehension of the subject
opposite to the pure colour, the pure sound that stimulates him.

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The second aspect (sensatum) differs for being:

a) The effect corresponding to the performance of the object that it
causes and the response of the subject to the performance;

b) Something elementary, concrete, relatively independent, intuitive
and consistent. That is to say, that the quot;greenquot; contained of my
sensation, is not anything of mine not of the object that it has
caused, but the resultant one of both factors; it neither is joined
inseparably with such a my act nor has to go necessarily
accompanied of certain contents; it is, precisely, this quot;greenquot; that
now I feel, which cannot make a mistake with no other; it presents
certain plastic, alive way of life, and such a consistency that
allows the one that could reappear before the conscience in
different conclusions, as in the representation.

The conditions of the sensation. - A being of the physical world (a
house, a clock, a caramel) it acts on a part of the human body. Such a
performance produces an excitement in the sensitive nerves, which
gone over to a nervous center (certain region of the brain), causes the
conscious fact of the sensation, like response of the subject.

Being, since, three the elements that in the sensation intervene (a
physical being, the organism of the subject and his complex psychic
life), the sensation is submitted to a triple conditioned reactions;
physical, physiological and psychic. As the sensation arises at the
end of the physiological process and favor to him, the conditions
determined by the first two elements are conditions previous.

The physical conditions: the stimulus. - The beings of the physical
way, as soon as they are causes of the sensation, are called stimuli,
and can be defined as “those facts that produce in the organism a
nervous excitement that will be accompanied of conscience”.

41


In relation to the organism the stimuli can split into day pupils or
interns, according to whom they are exterior or interior to him.
Nevertheless, the external stimulus must transform in intern, so that
it could cause the sensation.

The external stimuli can be chemical (in the olfactory sensations)
and physicists; these, in turn, mechanics (movements), optical,
acoustic, thermal and electrical. The interns are or peripheral or
central.

The conditions physiological. - Apart from the dispositions
momentary and individual, due to the entire corporal economy,
influence powerfully and decisively in the sensation not only the
structure of the organic parts put in game, but also his functional
changes. The organism intervenes in the sensation with the senses,
the nerves and the nervous centers.

How or from where is it decided what the individual feels and thinks?

According to Hume, it is not the reason the one that he decides
what we say or what do; they are our feelings. The rationalist thought
had thought that it is inherent in the reason of the man being able to
distinguish between the good and evil.

For example, if someone decides to help someone needed from
help, they are his feelings (desire, interest, intention, condescension,
compassion, altruism, etc.), and it is not the reason, which it starts.
Since if it does not give him desire to help (this is the action - will,
the final force that impels to the individual to achieve his goal or
target, which turns into a process).

42


Also in this case they are his feelings those that they decide. It is
neither sensible nor senseless not to help anybody who needs help,
but it can be vile.

Hume adds that, the whole world has certain feeling towards the
good of the others. We have the aptitude to show compassion. But all
this has not anything in common with the human reason.

Therefore, we cannot prove with the reason how we must act. To
act responsibly is not equivalent to sharpen the reason, but to
sharpen the feelings that one has towards the others. It does not go
against the reason preferring the destruction of the entire world to
having a scrape in a finger, said Hume.

The senses or sensory organs are determined part of our body, on
which they operate the stimuli. Some of them (the eye, the ear)
usually present a particular structure; and they all lodge elements of
a peculiar impressive textile; the nervous textile.

The nervous - The nervous system has, as last element, the
neuron, real anatomical unit. This is a cell that is known of a nucleus,
of several branched extensions that they radiate of that one, calls
dendrites, and of a long ramification, which is the so-called axòn or
cylinder - axis. The union of the axons of several cells that form the
nervous fibbers that, crossing the whole body, meet in the marrow
and in the brain, forming bunches and bundles. A nervous route
consists of ordinary of many contiguous neurons that happen. The
produced excitement, either in the periphery of the organism, either
in a nervous center, it is transmitted of neuron in neuron, causing
the nervous current, which or there causes a sensation (current
nervous afferent) or produces a muscular contraction in the
members (current nervous efferent).

43


The centers nervous - The elements that they gather in certain
interior regions of the organism, forming the nervous centers. His
purpose is to be a term and beginning of nervous currents and place
of his transformation. They are constituìdos for affiliation of
innumerable neurons.

Who wants to know? How can acquaintance be? What can be an
acquaintance?

There turns out to be quite strange that the majority of the
persons, even those who have never heard speaking about the
Scientific Method (or if they have heard it, little might for them
matter) want to understand the world that they makes a detour.
Really, this need for knowing is present also in the animals; a
monkey, or even a rat, sometimes they will happen for multiple
problems only to explore a part of his around.

In the persons, the need is strong, even if highly diversified. He
studies some to the birds; others enjoy the reading of obituary news.
And in addition to other interests, most of the persons likes
understanding to other persons (fell like to yes same).

Therefore, the scientific study of the man can seem related to the
obvious thing, while he says to us what any world already knows, or
that it offers us extreme or erroneous ideas. But we must recognize
and remember that not all the valuable knowledge about the people
is obvious and that, affectionately, a lot of quot;obviousquot; knowledge often
is false or trivial. But two preliminary problems must be established
first, to knowing: the questions of the existence of the universe and
the acquisition of the knowledge.

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Types of problems of the Knowledge

Before examining the forms in which we acquire the knowledge
and his sources, it is perhaps useful to determine if it is reasonable
to accept that we obtain some class of knowledge somehow, and
which might be the value of such knowledge, in case it was accepted
that such knowledge can be achieved.

The ontological or metaphysical problem, or: “What exists? The
basic assumption known about Rene Descartes (1596-1650): quot;
<<Cogito, ergo sum>> I think, and then I exist” one caused of a long
problem time stressed by the theology of the Christian Church. How
does the quot;mindquot; can know the quot;matterquot;? Or in other words: How can
we go so far as to know anything about the world? Perhaps it is only
a fiction of our imagination! The response of Descartes was
ingenious and persuasive; it keeps on worrying the philosophers and
scientists of nowadays. It be allowed to suppose me, he said
Descartes, that nothing there exists in the absolute thing about the
universe, except, the indisputable fact about which I am thinking,
here and now, and which, because I am thinking, there must exist an
entity that realizes thinking, this is, I. Even more, there must be a
part of me that knows and a part (more basic) that it is like
everything else, an object of knowledge. But immediately, Discard it
was seen before a subsequent problem

What happens if only I exist, and does the rest of the universe
exist only in the processes of my thought? Descartes worried deeply
with this possibility (that later was called solipsism), because for a
religious philosopher who could not doubt the God's existence,
doubt the existence of the universe was implying that God might be
playing a dirty trick of false representation. It is important to realize
that the step of “I think, and then I exist” to “the universe exists”
does not happen logically, happens only if the additional premises

45


are accepted: quot; God exists and is infinitely good and honest” and
“God gives me the perceptions of the world”. The sophist Gorgias
solved the quandary some 2500 years ago: “Nothing exists. If
something existed he might not be an acquaintance. If something
should be known it might not be communicated”. He was been
interested in particularly the logical and theological quandaries, and
the worry of the man for the spiritual thing relegated the problem
until the XVII Th century.

Then, the logical final conclusion that anything exists, except the
mind of the one that it perceives, was still avoided by Discarding,
Leibnitz and Berkeley. For them, God comes to the rescue: if it seems
that the world is there, this way it must be; paraphrasing to
Discarding: God is not a liar of confidence

On having denied the existence of the universe, the solipsism is
therefore an atheist and on the contrary; the traditional theism needs
from the consideration that the universe is real. (It might argue that the
solipsism is a form of theism that we might call an “autotheism “, which
it means “I am the God of my own universe”. But this variant hardly
might be considered to be quot;traditionalquot;). Nowadays, the exact sciences
you have exorcized in high grade the last doubt about the existence of
the world as a metaphysical insoluble problem. No response can be
passed or pushed back.

The problem epistemological: “How do we obtain the knowledge?” A
more permanent objection, really of enough actuality, arises from the
second and third affirmations of Gorgias: how, of being possible, can it
ago be known and communicated? The first one of these two problems
constitutes the base of the system of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). We
can know, he argued, only the impressions of the things, but do not sew
themselves, even more, these impressions they are perceived only
virtually on having been arranged to categorizations in accordance with

46


certain innate criteria of the mind preceptor. For using empirical
methods in order beyond the quot;simplequot; appearances, to the “things
themselves”, any attempt will only be able to end in a speculation
without end and esoteric: Although Kant wanted to provide rigorous
guidelines for the acquisition of knowledge, really it provided an option
for the scientist and an excuse for the metaphysician. The scientist had
to leave his effort to know the world or to restate his doubts to admit
that it might never but to know more than appearances.

On the other hand, the metaphysician and the theologian could
ignore comfortably the relations established empirically on having
accepted that these relations really say nothing about the things
themselves, only of his projections. Even without doubting the existence
of the world, it is possible to see how the distinction of Kant of the
perceived phenomena opposite to the quot;realquot; things had to lead to the
following logical step: the perceptions and the remarks are intimate
personal events, which by definition cannot be shared directly. (The
perception of someone more, therefore, turns into a projection that can
be known by me, only as a projection of “the second order”). Certain
logical problems, for example, where the proper mind of one is
observant or observed, or both, it must not worry us here.

We will examine on the other hand, the argument, since we cannot
know anything of what is quot;therequot;, of that everything what we can know
is learned on having observed and to analyze our own perceptions or
those innate ideas that can exist in us.

Supposing that we know nothing about the quot;realquot; world, only what we
observe inside us, it is nevertheless indisputable that the majority of us,
most of the time, we act as if we were hoping that these perceptions and
remarks should happen in a quite tidy form, or even more, to use the
worrying but precise terms, as if our perceptions were giving in the end
the illusion of causality and determinism. When we are wrong on having

47


derived the consequences of this quot;allusionquot;, a very disagreeable
perception can turn out to be like the one that is caused by the
perception of an assumption and not necessarily existing, truck that
happens on us. Certainly that the fact that the perceptions happen in
this tidy form does not prove the quot;realquot; existence of the truck. Also we
can in exceptional situations, choose cultivating the perceptions
independently of his arranging, since it happens in a frenzy or under the
influence of a psychedelic drug.

But the difference between the above mentioned is precisely
experiences and those who happen arranged in our life in wake what
leads us to taking a decision. We can never know if our private
perceptions are entirely the product of a deceitful and supernatural
conspirator or if it is that some consistent relation exists between what
it is out and what is in our brain. Our alternatives consist of acting as if
it was possible to know, or to resign ourselves what is, in effect,
solipsism. If we accept the last thing, the following obvious step would
be to impose our election on our perceptions and to perceive our
universe made by us ourselves, in accordance with our desires. Very few
of us we are capable of making it like that, and those that do it are not
seen by the others with equanimity. They have to be seen as if they were
experiencing illusions.

Nevertheless, without doing a very rash jump, it might be reasonable,
or at least suitably, to accept that the universe exists, that it has, at least
in certain grade, order, and that he can, in certain grade, be at least an
acquaintance.

48


Sources of the Knowledge

It is possible to say that, the behaviour faced to the search of the
knowledge, is a characteristic of the primitive native so much like of the
refined citizen (in fact, of no form it is limited for the man). The motives
for the search of the knowledge, they do not need to be the same; they
can change from the physical basic needs up to the satisfaction
sensation of the domain.

Some of the forms in which the knowledge has been looked by the
man seem to us entertaining nowadays; the entrails of the animals are
already not a method generally accepted to predict the future
(nevertheless, the reading of the coffee and of the tarot is still very
popular).

But the magic, like a way of acquiring the knowledge, always
neither needs to be spectacular in his procedures, nor can say to him
with certainty that such knowledge should always be necessarily
erroneous.

The characteristic that defines it, and that distinguishes it from
the scientific procedures, consists of the fact that accepts the existence
of a relation between the events, which is purely speculative and does
not hold to the critical cross-check. Also the form in which it accepts
that an event affects other has no base in the natural laws; it forms in
that we say, it is supposed that the stars affect to the human
destination, does not specify.

We must not fall down in the error of ridiculing the attempts of
any cultures in his early stages of development to acquire the mastery
of his ambience by means of the occasional use of the magic. Some
aspects of the same science developed from the magic, and anyone that
are the differences, he shares with the magic the need to know the

49


physical world (in opposition to the metaphysics) and the credence of
which the man can be more than a passive thing, disabled to
understand, that it is a part of such a world. A more pernicious enough
influence is the exercised one by those that they proclaim that they have
come to know the nature of the universe on having started thinking
about him intensely, or across the inspiration of a supernatural agent.
The scientist not necessarily supports that the only valuable knowledge
is the empirical one; she can be often a deeply worried person for the
spiritual values. But when it thinks about how to discover the
functioning of the real, tangible world, it has to, especially, be ready to
observe this world, and his inferences must be consistent with the above
mentioned observation.

Finally, the arguments appear sometimes saying to us that it is
absurd or sinful to study the nature of the man. There are only two
possible refutations to these two points of view. The scientist has to,
first of all show that his methods increase our knowledge of the man
and it must demonstrate that the knowledge is preferable to the
ignorance.

The act of the Perception

What is the perception?

The perception is, simply an act. In accordance with an old and
ingenuous concept, the nerves lead the images or properties of the
object to the brain where different machines register the stimuli
proceeding from the exterior.

The perception is the physical act of receiving impressions or
sensory (across the organs of the senses), that is to say, of registering
the reflection of the light or, to be more exact, the luminous waves, of

50


registering the sonorous waves, of answering with a sensation when
there touch the keys that mark “ cold “, “ heat “ or “ pain “.

Therefore, the perception is influenced by emotional factors and
desires (affiliation of emotional and sentimental factors), and such
psychological external determinants as the suggestion or the influence
of group (a process of individual stabilization and of social adaptation).

The basic beginning of the perception:

1. Factors of proximity.
2. Factors of Resemblance.
3. Factors of direction and inclusion.

A perception is a result of the interpretation of two stimuli: the figure
and the fund, this is in accordance with the theory of the Gestal.

Then we must understand that, the perception is not an outlying
phenomenon, but it is determined by external and internal stimuli.
Since, the act of perceiving is an act of integration and of synthesis. The
perception is directed by the attention, the interest, the integration and
other psychic factors.

THE SYSTEM PERCEPTUAL AND THE SENSITIVE WORLD

What are the faculties of the mind?
What is the constructive sense of the need and the sense that it has
BEING KNOWN in the human life?
How does he acquire and across that mechanism HUMAN
UNDERSTANDING?
So that it serves the individual the UNDERSTANDING?
How does the human being know and perceives the information of the
exterior and of the interior?

51


The potential possibilities of every person are the most
fascinating and interesting of the whole creation.
Ray L. Wilbur

What is the human brain?

“The ancient Greeks were thinking that the mind was in the heart
and not in the human brain. They were thinking that since the mind was
essential for the human being, it is it should be in the most vital organ
of all the organs”.

The brain has approximately the size of two placed hands one
along with other one or that of a coconut. It weighs about 1.5 kg, it is of
soft consistency, of white - greyish colour, composed basically of water
in his cells, so-called neurons.

The individual has two minds, one that thinks and reasons
(voluntary or rational acts), and other one who feels involuntary or
instinctive acts) is a set of impulsive and powerful knowledge.
There are three brains in one, according to Dr. MacLean (1987), and it
was demonstrated that the emotions and the stress affect learning and
how learning registers in the brain.

The human brain is the big biological center in which the matter
transforms in conscience. The brain is the big center in which there take
root two forces of conscience and the mind. Two sides of the human
brain, the right side where there develops the imagination and the
creativity and the left side that corresponds to the logical analysis
and other intelligence.

52


Therefore, the essence of our person or being is our unit of
conscience. Inside our brain there happens the biggest miracle of the life
that is the power to realize that “I think and exist …”

Inside every human being a universe shuts itself up. Perhaps still
much more vast and grand than of out formed by million human beings,
biological creatures, planets, stars and galaxies.

The personal universe, that of the conscience. There they lie in
accordance with Paul MacLein. The whole evolutionary file of the
tripartite brain, the reptile, the mammal and the cerebral neocorteza.

What is the mind and which are his characteristics?
How can we examine our capacity and see that objects are to our scope
and which over our comprehension?
How to know the origin, the certainty and the extension of the human
knowledge?
How to know the essentials and the grades of credence, of opinion and
feeling that can be had with regard to the different objects that refer to
our spirit?

What are the faculties of the spirit?
What are the limits of the certainty of our knowledge and the essentials
of the opinions that are seen reigning between the men?

The functioning of the human beings in learning and in the daily
this life basically determined by the quantity of endogenous
neurohormonas that produces our brain and that also it consumes.
These chemical substances or endogenous drugs take place inside or in
the surface of our brain and are consumed also there; therefore, it is as
if we had the whole pharmacy inside us that segregates the
indispensable matters for the construction of the knowledge and the
thought.

53


The brain is not only a cash machine register but at the same time
that it registers he interprets the sense of the impressions. The act of
perception is not like the response of a machine. If he installs to himself
several artists to whom they paint the same scenery, each of it gives us a
different picture. Every spectator of a movie can speak to us about the
different things that he has observed; a piece of music is perceived in a
very different way by different listeners; several witnesses of an
accident or of an event tell us varied versions. We do not perceive only
with an organ but every phenomenon is registered by several and the
lightest deviation in each one can give place to considerable changes in
every person.

Kant says that, “we see the things not as them they are but since
we are we”. The perception can become an interpretation of the
unknown thing. The following story exhibits us the idea that a blind
person of the sun had:

A blind man of birth was. He had never seen the sun and was asking how it was
to the people whom he it had seen. Someone said to him that the sun has the
form of a plate of brass. The blind person struck a plate of brass and listened
to his sound. Hence from now on when it heard the sound of a bell he was
thinking that it was the sun. Later they said to him that the light of the sun was
like that of a sail; the blind person felt a sail and believed that such age the
form of the sun and this way when further on it touched a big sail he thought
that it was a question of the sun.

It is deduced of this history that the perception cannot be
communicated and his relations are deduced also with the imagination.
Of the above mentioned story we can extract the conclusion that the
truth is more difficult to see the sun, and when the people do not know
her he behaves exactly just as the blind person. What is true for the
exterior perceptions also it is for the internal ones; these perceptions
are not fixed elements and they have to be understood in his set.

54

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